For Summer Solstice, I Will Query More

20Jun

One of the original queries I sent has now reached 5 weeks with no response beyond the initial auto-generated confirmation that the email was received. From this particular agency’s website:

“How long will it take…
To answer your query letter, up to four weeks. To read your sample chapters and outline, about the same. To read your whole manuscript, overnight to a few months. (If we request it, please check with us.)”

Delicious query looks delicious.

I largely let the fifth week slip in because I’ve been spending more and more time flooding the city with resumes and cover letters. Either way, it seems it is time to send out a new query and consider that one expired, bloated, and drifting down the Mississippi to feed carrion birds and catfish.

The last of the original queries is still floating around out there. It never received an automated email to let me know it was received, the agency’s website is under construction (though somewhat navigable), and they do not list an expected turnaround on queries. Even so, it’s a big agency with a lot of popular talent, so I will probably let it sit for another couple of weeks at least before I count it among the dead.

I still have more than a month until I can expect to hear back from the agent that has the entire manuscript, so there isn’t much to do in that direction. In the meantime, I’m reworking my fantasy novel, Blood of a Godkiller, to pick up the pace, deepen some characters, and really smooth it out overall. After completing The Coalslides, I was better able to see some of the shortcomings my first completed manuscript was facing. Luckily, it had a general sort of success in drawing interest when I was sending queries out for it, so I’m confident that sorting out the ms itself will do wonders for its viability.

So, that’s that. I’m off to find a new agent to replace the one that I haven’t heard back from.